Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
Games come with a scripted story or they dont. Most games, especially those with avatars, tell a story as the player advances the avatar through situations that once strung together, shape into a story.

Exactly. A common model that doesn't work very well. Books and movies are much, much bettar at telling this kind of story. What you get in a game is usually something resembling an incredibly poor "movie" consisting of scripted scenes the player can't control. In between these you have gameplay sections, but the story elements and gameplay elements seldom gels into a cohesive whole. Planescape: Torment and Demon Souls are (whatever else you might think of them) excellent exceptions, where even the inevitable death mechanic is incorporated into the fiction of the setting.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
Quite a surprising statement from someone who considers that bad game mechanics can break a game but good game mechanics never makes a good game.

Ideally, game mechanics and other elements should gel into a cohesive whole, a complete experience of being there, in the game world. If you focus on the game aspect of playing, good mechanics can certainly outweigh other shortcomings, but if the immersion aspect is your priority, not even the best mechanics can make up for otherwise bland an uninteresting content.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
Ulysses is a master piece story delivered through a book. A book is a mere medium and must not be a game. A book is not a game. The only question is to know whether video games can act as a medium to deliver stories of the quality of Joyce's Ulysses. Just as books do.
Rhetorical question at this point.

Of course it's a rhetorical question. The book is not a game. As for your question, the answer is definitely no. Games will never be able to "deliver" or "tell" any predefined story nearly as well as a book or a movie can, because any type of gameplay (yes, I mean any type of gameplay) will necessarily get in the way of the storytelling. But video games don't have to compete with books or movies on their turf. Vide games have other strengths, mainly giving the player the power of choice.